Read Chapter 28: The King's Decision

The King’s hand, liver-spotted and trembling, rose from the arm of the throne. The physicians had swarmed him the moment he collapsed, but he waved them off with a fury that silenced the entire Hall of Mirrors.

“Enough.”

The word cracked through the glittering room like a pistol shot. Élise stood at the base of the dais, her shoulder still throbbing from where a mercenary’s rifle butt had caught her during the skirmish. She watched the old monarch pull himself upright, his ceremonial robes hanging off a frame that had shrunken to bone and sinew. The Lily Crown sat crooked on his brow.

“You.” The King’s gaze found the Duke of Orléans, who stood in the grip of two royal guards, his velvet coat torn at the shoulder. “You have spent thirty years waiting for this throne. You have schemed, and bribed, and murdered. And you have forgotten one thing.”

The Duke’s mouth tightened. “Brother—”

“You have forgotten that I am still King.”

The words rang out. Élise saw the assembled nobles exchange glances, the parliamentarians shifting in their seats. The Prime Minister, a thin man with a waxed mustache, had gone the color of candlewax. Beside Élise, Louis stood rigid, Aubin at his side, the young guard’s hand resting on his holster.

The King raised his hand, and a herald stepped forward with a scroll. Élise recognized it: the second testament, the one she had been searching for. Where had it come from? She scanned the hall and caught a glimpse of Jean-Philippe Roux near the press gallery, his coat pocket empty, nodding almost imperceptibly at her.

“By the authority vested in me by God and the Charter of 1814,” the King said, his voice steadying with each word, “I declare my brother, Philippe, Duke of Orléans, guilty of high treason, of conspiracy against the Crown, and of attempted regicide. I strip him of all titles, lands, and privileges. And I order him taken to the Bastille, where he will remain until such time as the courts see fit to judge him.”

The Duke lunged. The guards were ready. They wrenched his arms behind his back, and Élise heard the click of manacles. The Duke’s eyes, wild and furious, found hers across the hall.

“You think this is over?” he spat at her. “You think you have won? The consortium still sits in the Assembly. The banks still hold the debt. You have saved a dying man’s throne for a boy who will inherit a kingdom of ash.”

“Take him,” the King said.

The guards dragged the Duke toward the doors. Élise watched him go, and for a moment she felt the weight of everything she had done. Her father’s face flashed in her mind—the letter she had found in Duval’s files, the blackmail note. She pushed it away. Not now.

The doors slammed shut behind the Duke. The Hall of Mirrors fell into a hush so complete that Élise could hear her own heartbeat.

The King swayed. A physician stepped forward, but the King fixed him with a glare that would have wilted a younger man. He turned his gaze to the assembled parliament, to the rows of deputies who had been bought with consortium coin, who had prepared to vote Louis unfit.

“I am not a fool,” the King said. “I know what you have been promised. I know what you have been paid. But I am still the man who signs the decrees, and I am still the man who commands the army.” He paused, drawing a ragged breath. “I name Louis, my only son, as my sole heir and successor. And I name him Prince Regent, to rule in my name from this moment until the moment of my death.”

Louis stepped forward. Élise saw him square his shoulders, saw the boy—no, the man, she corrected herself—meet his father’s eyes. There was grief there, buried deep, but also steel.

“The Regency is proclaimed,” the herald announced.

The parliament erupted. Not in protest—in motion. Élise watched deputies rise from their seats, some with papers clutched in their hands, others pushing toward the exits. The Prime Minister had not moved. He stood frozen at the front of the parliamentary delegation, his mouth opening and closing like a fish in a dry riverbed.

“Monsieur le Premier Ministre,” the King said, his voice dropping to a near-whisper. “Do you have something to say?”

The Prime Minister swallowed. He glanced at the empty seat where the Grand Chamberlain should have been, at the nervous faces of his own ministers. His hand went to his collar, tugging at it as though it had become suddenly tight.

“Your Majesty,” he began, “I—I must regretfully tender my resignation. My health, you see, has been…”

“Accepted,” the King said.

The Prime Minister’s face went slack. He looked as though he had expected a fight, expected to be begged to stay, expected the Crown to need him. Instead, the King had simply cut him loose, a dead branch pruned from a tree that was still fighting to live.

“Then let it be recorded,” the King said, “that the government of France answers to the Crown, and the Crown answers to the people. And the people,” he added, nodding toward the press gallery, where the journalists were scrambling to take notes, “have seen everything tonight.”

Élise felt a hand on her arm. Louis had moved to stand beside her, his eyes dark with emotion he was trying to contain.

“You did this,” he said quietly. “You, and Roux, and the truth.”

“I did what I was assigned to do,” she said.

Louis smiled, a thin, tired smile. “You did what you were assigned to do, and then you did what was right, when the assignment was taken from you. That is not the same thing, Captain.”

The King’s physicians were closing in now, their urgent whispers carrying over the murmur of the crowd. The old monarch was sinking back into his throne, his face gray, his breath coming in shallow gasps. But as Élise watched, he raised one hand and beckoned her forward.

She climbed the dais. The King’s eyes, filmed with age and illness, found hers.

“The house of the dead,” he rasped. “You will understand. When you need it. You will understand.”

His hand fell. The physicians pressed forward, and Élise was pushed back down the steps, her mind spinning with the old man’s words.

Behind her, the Chamber was emptying. Deputies were fleeing, ministers were resigning, and the night air through the open windows carried the distant sound of crowds gathering in the streets below—word traveling, as word always did, faster than any official declaration.

Louis stood at the center of it all, a pale young man in a blood-spattered coat, watching his father die and his kingdom reform in the space of a single night.

Élise did not look back. She could not. If she looked back, she would see the ghost of her father at the edges of the hall, and she was not ready to face him.

Not yet.